


Madonna of the Evening Flowers

by leafiest_groves



Series: ❃ 𝓛𝓮𝓱𝓮𝓷𝓰𝓪 𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓲𝓮𝓼 ❃ [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: ABO, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, F/M, Fluff, Indian Potters, Light Angst, Pureblood Culture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-12
Updated: 2020-03-12
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:35:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23120107
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leafiest_groves/pseuds/leafiest_groves
Summary: Charlus is somewhere between agitated and heartbroken. He knows his daughter has good taste, (he’s mated to a Black too) but that still can’t seem to quell his quiet sorrow. The room is still faintly scented of his lady-wife and his only child, his precious daughter, his miracle. The wedding is a show of an honestly disgusting amount of extravagance, and it’s with a rueful chuckle that he’s reminded of his adolescence and his wedding at the constantly moving hustle and bustle.
Relationships: Charlus Potter/Dorea Potter, Charlus Potter/Original Female Character (past), Dorea Potter/Original Male Character (one sided), Female James Potter/Sirius Black
Series: ❃ 𝓛𝓮𝓱𝓮𝓷𝓰𝓪 𝓼𝓮𝓻𝓲𝓮𝓼 ❃ [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1661890
Kudos: 38





	Madonna of the Evening Flowers

Charlus is somewhere between agitated and heartbroken. He knows his daughter has good taste, (he’s mated to a Black too) but that still can’t seem to quell his quiet sorrow. The room is still faintly scented of his lady-wife and his only child, his precious daughter, his miracle. The wedding is a show of an honestly disgusting amount of extravagance, and it’s with a rueful chuckle that he’s reminded of his adolescence and his wedding at the constantly moving hustle and bustle.

* * *

_“Been chasing a pretty omega across Europe, eh?”_

_Charlus gripped the wood of the railing so hard that it might’ve splintered. It’s a small mercy that he has tight control over his pheremones, because otherwise the whole yacht deck would reek of agitated alpha. A tight smile works its way across his face, and anyone who knows his smile, even his fake society mask, will know that this one is painfully fake. She has always just been ‘Little Dorea’ to him. To all of them. But when he stalks across Europe to find her, he cannot answer Heir Urquhart with honesty when he asks if he’s been “chasing some pretty omega across Europe”. After all, she has long since ceased to be ’some pretty omega’. She has ceased to be ’the young lady who entertains him’. She has eclipsed him entirely, she is all he yearns to chase after. He wants to mate her, he wants to scent her, he wants her familiar radiance about him every second of every day. She is not ‘Petite Reine Dorea’. She is a daughter of the gods, divinely fair; and for some infuriating reason, she refuses to belive him._

_But today, she is simply a laughing memory that dances through his thoughts whenever his eyes close. Why must she continually elude him? His eyes rove over the now familiar streets and canals as everyone gets off at the pier; his peripheral vision alerting him to any passing ladies in blue or black. His eyes may have decieved him, but his nose won’t. The scent Dorea possesses is unique in a way nobody else’s is. Her scent was turpentine and oils, roses and nosegays, wet earth after rain. It drove him wild. His senses aching for the smallest taste of her aura, he lets himself pine over that which quite possibly will never come to be, if Heir Prince “goes properly down on his knees”._

_He was roaming the streets of Venice aimlessly, squandering his time out on the continent, doing everything Dorea told him not to do. It was poor compensation for his lovelornity, and no amount of gelato and coffee and brandy will change that._

_It is precisely because they are not two flints that will ignite a flame, it is precisely because cool, shrewd Dorea will look at him with disgust, that he feels his control slip sharply between his fingers. She sends his thoughts whirling helplessly, she made him cling to every word she spoke. He knew when he was trying Dorea Black’s famed temper, but he will provoke her, if only to see that delicious flush dance across her pale skin, like a wash of salmon watercolor on the priciest paper he could find for her. Whatever she said to him before she disappeared into the Swiss Alps was good advice, but that won’t stop him from snorting in annoyance into his champagne once he’s drunk._

_When he asks her, when he knows ~~(he thinks)~~ he’s being earnest, she dances out of his grasp once more. She will not be second to anyone in something again. Does it matter that he wants to feel her rapidly warming cheeks in his hands? Does it matter that the very sight of her evokes the flame that the embers of forgotten boyish flames will never be able to? Heir Prince is a lucky man, he thinks. He won’t envy Rigel his lady-wife. _

_Meeting her again wasn’t what he expected it to be. He expected it to be an icy meeting between two old friends, an old connection thoroughly lost. He hadn’t expected to be welcomed into her life with open arms, to feel the same compassion he’d felt years ago. Heir Charlus Potter should’ve been the name of someone who was long since dead to her. But that simply isn’t true, and that makes him fall in love with her that much more._

_Dorea rushing to clean the place up, as if trying to remove the stain of her presence from the room, isn’t something he expects to see. 'Raphaella, Little genius, what pain plagues you?’ Rome took the vanity out of her, did it? He hears her nearly break down, the quivering in her voice and her tone._

_"Well, I’m not an individual Charlus. I’m just a omega. Any other family would let me live, let me breathe. But not this one.”_

_Mother Magic disagrees with her because he said so. He will convince her of that. Love isn’t something that happens to you, but when you fall faster than you’d expect, tumbling and crashing like the highest waves, it can feel like it. “Do you love him?” He might kill himself if the answer is yes. He might kill himself if the answer is no._

_Either way, he will have to live in a world where Dorea’s laughs, her scent, her touches are all reserved for Rigel Prince, who is apparently-“rich, richer than you even.” Or he will have to drink himself to death, plagued by the fear that even if she doesn’t love Rigel Prince, even if she still loves him, she chose to reserve her kisses and hugs and touches for ‘dear old Rigel’, simply because he had fooled himself into thinking he loved Lyra._

_The party in Paris three months later isn’t just a scandal. It’s an absolute disaster._

_He is so drunk that he can barely sense the people next to him. He lets Dorea fume at him, because it is well deserved. He will apologise to Raphaella for his behaviour tomorrow in the studio, but today, he is just an idiot who hurts her. He’s shown her up, he’s willfully ignored her because of his own fear. “Rigel Prince, ladies and gentlemen!” It is ever so crass, and it humiliates her. He is so, so stubborn. Either he gets his way or nothing._

_The words are a fading memory now. Rigel Prince, goddammit. He will tear Rigel’s throat out while he’s shifted, he will pin him and make him cry out for mercy. He will have the satisfaction of a blooded death, since he cannot have her for his own, and it’s all his fault._

_“Rich, richer than you even.” “I’ve always known that I would marry rich, what is there to be ashamed of?”_

_Charlus has never wanted for anything in his life, but now he feels twofold heartbreak, and the flickering flame of the love he had fooled himself into having for Lyra is nothing compared to the inferno Dorea has set loose within him. Dorea’s laughter, her scream of fear when he fell through the ice, her society mask and her sincerity, her talent and her energy, her 'lack of genius’, every one of those things he has witnessed. Rigel can’t claim as much, can he? He still remembers the way Dorea would move him around and adjust the poses she wanted him to hold._

_She has always been glorious, but seeing her run out of the weaving hall, moments after he tells her she’s beautiful, only to kiss both of Rigel Prince’s cheeks, to giggle when he serenades her with his friends, to hold his arms and walk through the manor gardens, he feels a resigned sort of weight settle in his soul. Vibrant and fair, elegant and exuberant, they look simply perfect for each other. Their strengths and talents play off of the other beautifully, he thinks. But he won’t embarass Dorea anymore. He won’t drown his anxious anger in wine. He’ll submerge himself over his head in music, that the lonely bachelor may have something to sink into more than he already has._

_When news from across the atlantic makes Dorea long for company, it is long gone. Charlus, vowing to do some good with himself, apparently convinced that he cannot have her, has run all the way to Vienna. Cedrella is dead, and Dorea never got to say goodbye. Cedrella has disappeared from before her, and Dorea thinks she’s let all the loves she’s ever had in her life slip through her fingers. She won’t let her father treat her like it’s the dark ages. Her favorite person in the world died whelpng an heir for someone she didn’t love. A mate she never wanted. She won’t let her father tell her that a good omega would be willing to make sacrifices for their pack, for their family. She won’t let her father sell her off to the richest man he can find. She’s going to find Charlus and tell him that she doesn’t hate him. She’s going to tell Charlus that she’s never despised him, and could never bring herself to. She will tell him he holds her heart, that she wants the best for him, for them._

_Charlus meanwhile, discovers that he is in over his head, and when the opera fails to give him the bittersweet comfort he hoped it would; he rips his pleasing chaos of pegasi, crest embroidered ribbons, peacocks and a charming and faceless lady to pieces. He will not be satisfied until the phantom of Dorea’s voice has come to haunt him in the back of his mind, and he admits to himself that talent truly isn’t genius, and no amount of energy, or even loverlike fury can make it so. Vienna proves itself to be useless, and once the pieces are sold and he sets out for finding a better place to hide his misery, Mother sends the painful news from back home. He feels his hopes continue to shatter. At least Dorea will find comfort in her lord- husband. He, on the other hand, has no idea where to run to next._

_Dorea tears through her papers, scribbling the volumes to him that she thought would come courtesy of Lyra, not her. But when comfort wraps its arms about you gently, you cannot help but strangle yourself within it until you feel yourself choking. The silks, the cross, the black ribbon in her hair-now left mostly open in the privacy of the Switzerland estate her cousin Alphard owns-everything about her was in the waiting game._

_There was nothing to do but wait._

_She could tell the world that she was fine with turning down Rigel’s proposal now. She could finally say that it was for the best. She could also continue denying that she did it out of a pining, distant affection for “the Potter boy”. But the barest trace of his scent in the garden would have her desperate to shift that exact moment, and meet him as fast as she could. She knew it. She’d fantasised about it plenty of times. When the moment comes, however, she can’t do much but wait. She stands there, looking at him like she would like to drink him in like a fine wine and savor the feeling of his alpha aura for ages. When those familiar feelings crescendo in her soul once again, she doesn’t have the heart to bury them again. She sends them out when she cries that she knew, she just knew he’d come to her. She hopes he will know she is sincere._

_The news is enough to stun him. Dorea has turned him down. She has turned Rigel Prince down. She has escaped from the insanity of her family, of a pack that mistreated her. There is almost something expectant in the way she looks up at him, the way her cross hammers over her skin because of her rapid pulse, the way she stares at him with wet lashes and sobs quietly enough that he can’t hear her, but can feel her shaking in his embrace. He holds her tight, he tells her simply, that he cannot let her travel alone and unmated while having to care for herself. He cannot let her feel lonely and homesick when there is anything in his power he can do to remedy it; even if she does despise him._

_When she whispers that no, she doesn’t despise him, when she whispers that she has turned Rigel Prince down, when she whispers that he is under no obligation to say or do anything, when she whispers that she’s free, he briefly wonders if the grief of a friend’s passing has driven him to invent a fantasy of a happy reality. Dorea’s aura is beside him, clamouring for his attention, screaming otherwise. When he kisses her, he kisses her like it’s the last time he’ll ever see her. He kisses her like he’s binding his soul to hers. He kisses her like the weeping watercolours that smudge and blur together in her paintings, into a single masterpiece. When he pulls back, he can hardly believe that this is what it’s come to. He has her at last, and he won’t rest until she is sure of that fact that she is never a second place, a replacement. He won’t stop until he has scented her so strongly that she smells taken and safe and owned. He won’t let go of her until he is sure, absolutely sure, that nothing can rip her away from him._

_The first time he takes Dorea to his home, the first time he whisks her away from Europe, the wonder in her eyes is spectacular. She spends hours painting and sketching the city in every hour of the day. He takes her on private tours of old forts and castles, out on the lake and around the bazaars. It’s a lost heritage that becomes part of muggle society as time goes on, but the magical are insistent in their desire to preserve their history. Watching someone you love seeing something you know well with fresh eyes is incredible, Charlus thinks. The world around them vibrates with the energy of kings and queens from the eras gone by, and it is there that he thinks of a name for a baby girl, a sharp and talented one, one he would feel unworried handing the title to._

* * *

Charlus snaps out of a year’s worth of memories out on the continent when his darling daughter steps in for help. She’s wearing her mother’s wedding lehenga, and it had made his jaw drop when he saw Dorea in it. He wonders if it is possible for it to have the same effect on Sirius. He named her Jahanara for a reason. Queen of the world, and she truly looks the part. He won’t scent her again. He won’t see her for two months. He runs his fingers through her hair to tie it into an intricate low bun for the last time. When he hands her over to her chosen mate, someone she loves with her whole heart, to someone she trusts with her life, he cannot be upset with anything anymore. They’ve prevented history from repeating itself. Jahanara Cedrella is a Black now, and when crowds of friends and family congratulate them, the swelling sense of pride cannot be helped.

Petite Reine Dorea has birthed someone incredible. She’s going to make something incredible of her life. Charlus is assualted by memories of Rigel and Dorea’s ill-fated courtship. He sees his mate running to someone who won’t embarrass her, to someone who will love her and keep her contented for the rest of her life.

_Rigel Prince, ladies and gentlemen!_

_You are beautiful._

_Rich, richer than you are even._

The feeling disappears quickly. Dorea is next to him today, and always will be. Their story is one that too many people know, a story with it’s fair share of messes and accidents. But Dorea, calm, cool and loving Dorea, Dorea with her ebony hair and her warm gold eyes, Dorea with her laughter and her cutting comments and her talent, she will stand with him and stand by him forever.

**Author's Note:**

> Dear god this vignette was long. I adored every moment of it however. Ellory, I feel like with our shared love of Charles and Dorea, this story arc will delight you as much as it delighted me. It as a monster of a piece to write, but I just couldn’t help it! It was a wonderful story to tell, and I loved it.  
> It certainly feels different to write ABO, but now that I’ve dipped my toes, I feel like I might try testing the waters with both feet sometime soon. Thank you again for enlightening me with that quick idea of what to expect with the ABO 'verse, because I genuinely adore this story and this pairing so much that I might sequel it.  
> As always, I hope you liked it and I hope you enjoy! This was part of an ongoing ask event on my Tumblr, so check it out before it's over.  
> Feel free to tell me what you think of it. See you on the next vignette!


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